Monthly Archives: December 2015

Learning a new language takes a lot of time, effort, patience and perseverance. If you’re feeling frustrated or discouraged, hopefully these suggestions from a TEFL Research article will encourage you to “stay the course” until you reach your learning goals. NOTE: This article is written in British English.

1. Boost motivation with teamworkResearch at Stanford University shows that people who feel like they’re working as a team (even though they may not physically be working together) are more interested in the task and more likely to perform better. Get into the team spirit by signing up to a language learning forum like this one.

2. Speed up vocabulary learning with spaced repetitionSpaced repetition is a memorising technique which draws from the “spacing effect”. This effect, first spotted by the father of memory research Hermann Ebbinghaus, means that you are more likely to remember information which is studied a few times over a longer period of time compared to many times within a short space of time. To access these free videos, please click on the link below.

3. Set small, attainable goalsWorking towards a large goal like “learn language X” can be overwhelming. My language learning targets are often a little on the vague side, a known motivation killer.

Research shows that setting smaller subgoals is highly beneficial to learning. For example, Bandura and Shunk (1982) demonstrated that, over 7 sessions, people who were instructed to complete 6 pages of maths problems per session completed the task faster and more accurately than people who were given 42 pages from the outset.

Learn about what inspires people to what to improve their language and other skills from these videos. If the language level is too high, you can listen with closed captions so you can read what you hear. Stop and repeat sections that are difficult to understand and pay attention to words you hear emphasized and that you know.

What animal would you rather have as a pet from the 4 choices below? Why did you choose that animal? Find someone who chose a different animal for a pet than you. Then, share your reasons for your choice with each other. Did either of you change your mind after discussing why you each chose “your” animal as a pet? What did you learn about each other from the conversation you had about your favorite pet?